Problem: I made an app for the Android 5.1 Platform. I now need to make it compatible with ICS. What is the best way to accomplish that?
I know that I should have set the minSDK to ICS when I started the project, but now I essentially want to change the minSDK in the middle of the project.
I am using android studio as the IDE (latest release).
Since you using minSdk=22 from the beginning Android Studio does not alarm you about incompatibilities issues.
First of all you should change midSdk of course. Than review all the sources for incompatibility warnings like 'using new android api'. Such analysis easily can be done with 'lint'. When you find one do not suppress it with #TargetApi, but write additional code to work around.
Something like:
if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.LOLLIPOP) {
do_your_magic();
} else {
add_additional_code_for_pre_lollipop();
}
Looks ugly but this is the world we live in)
Also you may find some 'deprecated methods' warnings, leave them alone, they does not matter for your question.
There can be some other cases. Maybe it will be necessary to include support-v7 and change your Activities. Maybe you using libraries that do not support ICS. Not knowing project details can't help much.
Related
We're trying to make our apps more accessible, and one of the things we're looking at is supporting larger font sizes when configured from the system settings.
We noticed that on Android 7.0 (and probably earlier versions too), the system font sizes are not properly applied within our app. We also noticed that some other apps like gmail were properly handling the font size change, so it was "something" our app was doing wrong. After quite some time investigating we found out that using the androidx library seems to be the cause.
For example, creating a "hello world" new project under Android Studio, you'll see a "use androix artifacts" checkbox:
Then, if you set the accessibility font size to the highest value:
This will be the result for your app if you checked the "androidx" checkbox (not working):
This will be the result for your app if you didn't check the "androidx" checkbox (working properly):
If you check that box, the produced app binary will not apply system accessibility font size changes properly on Android 7.0, otherwise it will work fine.
Migrating to androidx was a little bit of work and since it's the future (the support library is gradually getting deprecated), going back is not really an option :/
Has anyone else encountered a similar issue?
Could that be a bug with the androidx library?
If anyone found a way to keep the androidx library and not have this bug, I would really like to know about it, thank you in advance!
Update your implementations, example:
implementation 'androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.2.0-alpha01'
You may also need:
implementation 'com.android.support:support-v4:28.0.0'
I'm just wondering, if the latest Android SDK installed on a device contains code of all the previous versions as well?
So if I target API level 10 in my app and install it on a device with Lollipop, will it just take and use Gingerbread SDK exactly as it was 3 years ago?
Or is there just one codebase for all versions with a lot of checks and switches which is then run by some kind of compatibility mode picking the correct code and enabling methods of the version of SDK I target?
I read the article about android:targetSdkVersion specified in Manifest but still would like to know how this works internally.
Ok, I just surfed a bit around on the source code (which you can find here: https://github.com/android/platform_frameworks_base). I'm not an engineer of the Android framework, I was just curious about your question and here is what I found.
It does not contain all the different versions of source code. You can imagine that this would result in a nightmare if more and more versions become available. Foremost, you would have different (buggy) versions of the same method without fixing them just to keep them the same.
In the source code, you can find places like these: (see https://github.com/android/platform_frameworks_base/blob/59701b9ba5c453e327bc0e6873a9f6ff87a10391/core/java/com/android/internal/view/ActionBarPolicy.java#L55)
public boolean hasEmbeddedTabs() {
final int targetSdk = mContext.getApplicationInfo().targetSdkVersion;
if (targetSdk >= Build.VERSION_CODES.JELLY_BEAN) {
return mContext.getResources().getBoolean(R.bool.action_bar_embed_tabs);
}
// ...
return mContext.getResources().getBoolean(R.bool.action_bar_embed_tabs_pre_jb);
}
So the Android developers do the version check in the code where necessary. But these checks are not as necessary as you think (I guess). What's the reason for changing a method?
method is buggy: All they need to do is fix the bug. Tests will make sure that the general behavior of the method keeps the same
method is deprecated: The guys can not remove the method, all they can do is mark it as deprecated and hope for the best. Compilers will do the rest.
method behavior has to change: Well, I guess that is something they can not do easily. They can work around with version codes (which is pretty ugly and becomes a maintenance nightmare), or they just introduce a new API. That's the reason why you'll find a lot of APIs just doing the same
If you have write down a code with latest android sdk and install it in your device. It means actually you are using latest android.jar(you can see android.jar in your project) file while compiling/Executing code.
Now If you install your application in ginger bread device then android.jar(latest) has a backward compatibility(if required) to run code in Gingerbread device.and if you define target sdk version 10 and running app on Higher API level ,then it will run smooth except your compatibility behavior disable in respective device other than targeted devices.
I am making application with target SDK set to 17 and min to 8.
So for some features I have to use Support library v4
Question is how can I test it works on older devices?
I am testing on my phone - which has 4.2.2; and I don't have others with older ones
Will creating emulator with 2.3.3 be true test?
tnx
Update
Just for example: I use Fragment in my code (from android.app, not from support library) - even if my minSDK is 4 - I don't see any warnings...should I?
Yes. It is an emulator (not a simulator) so it is very similar to running your code on the corresponding phone.
Another good practice is to run the Lint tests from times to times, they can detect many common mistakes in your code (including compatibility).
Your ide (both Eclipse & Android Studio plugins do this) will also display warning for obvious calls to functions that don't exist at your chosen min API level.
Most of the time emulator behave same if we consider layout view and
other stuff like look and feel performance , but that can be
difference in case of speed performance and sound quality
.
I found one online tool which are providing that service please go through that link , https://appthwack.com
apache lint (from tools) is the answer - shows all problems
Hello I have developed my first application for Android using the Ice Cream Sandwich SDK and I was wondering if there was a way to make this compatible for devices also running Gingerbread without having to re-do the entire program. I have tried to find the answer to this from other sources but haven't found anything yet. Thank you for your time.
Congratulations for the development of your first application ;)
It's difficult to answer to your questions without knowing what your application is using. If your application use new features of the Android ICS API, you have to implements some compatibility code (see Support package). If not, you just need to add this in your AndroidManifest.xml :
<uses-sdk
android:targetSdkVersion="14"
android:minSdkVersion="7"
/>
Note that 7 is for Android 2.1
The best way to know if you use specific API of Android 4 (ICS) is to try to launch your project on an emulator under a lower version. If this give you error(s), it's because you have compatibility problems.
Just set your build target in Eclipse to Android 2.3. If you get any compilation errors in Eclipse, than this means that you are using APIs that are not available in 2.3 and your application will crash when it is going to reach at those lines when running on 2.3> .
Just make sure youre using APIs that are there on older versions of Android. Try to read the wahts new for ICS and avoid those :) which pretty much beats the purpose of using a newer SDK that changes alot and breaks lots of things. Beware of the new layouts....
I want to implement a gateway for handling outgoing calls.
In the latest Android versions 2.x I can do this easily with the hidden ACTION_CALL extra string:
"com.android.phone.extra.GATEWAY_URI"
But in earlier versions, like 1.6, I don't know how to do it. It must be possible because Google Voice is doing it. Can someone please help me?
Thanks,
Emmanuel
Hey Emmanuel,
76% of Devices already run Android 2.x maybe that effort is wasted. Gingerbread is expected to come out by the end of the year, which will push the percentage of 1.6 Devices further down. In less than half a year Android 2.x and higher will by beyond the 80% mark. Just look at the Platform version distribution http://d.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html. Maybe have a look at the source code in the Android Open Source Project.
I found the string you mentioned in the InCallScreen.java. Maybe that gives you a way to dig into the older source code to try to figure out if you can access it through some undocumented APIs. But my suggestion would be to not bother with those last 25% of 1.6 devices they will disappear fast.
[Update]
Since it is a requirement to make it work, I would suggest you recompile the Phone App from the git repository and make it debugable that way you can see exactly what is going on. Probably having an ASOP Device running 1.6 would be your best bet to drill deep into how Android is doing it. Basically you would have to back port all the code that is involved in this feature in 2.x back to 1.6. From a time to market perspective I would suggest get the app out with 2.x support and release a second version that is tailored for 1.6. Delaying the release just because of 1.6 seems to be a bad business idea.
That code using the GATEWAY_URI was definitely added in Eclair.
Looking into AOSP, in packages/apps/Phone/src/com/android/phone/InCallScreen.java, that bit of code is completely inexistant in Donut :
// If a provider is used, extract the info to build the
// overlay and route the call. The overlay will be
// displayed the first time updateScreen is called.
if (PhoneUtils.hasPhoneProviderExtras(intent)) {
mProviderLabel = PhoneUtils.getProviderLabel(this, intent);
mProviderIcon = PhoneUtils.getProviderIcon(this, intent);
mProviderGatewayUri = PhoneUtils.getProviderGatewayUri(intent);
mProviderAddress = PhoneUtils.formatProviderUri(mProviderGatewayUri);
mProviderOverlayVisible = true;
if (TextUtils.isEmpty(mProviderLabel) || null == mProviderIcon ||
null == mProviderGatewayUri || TextUtils.isEmpty(mProviderAddress)) {
clearProvider();
}
} else {
clearProvider();
}
I cannot see any alternative. You're best luck maybe to take that Phone application from Donut, add what you need and release it as a new Phone application on Donut devices...